Proust, part 1, in short

To say the least, it’s been awhile since I updated this blog—mea culpa, mea culpa—but life’s busy, times are hard… you fill in the rest. My general negligence of this blog has not, however, been reflective of my actual working progress. I’m quite ecstatic to report that I’ve finished Proust’s Swann’s Way and basically fell in love with it. I’m such a sucker for a good nostalgic ramble and this novel was that plus some of the most eloquent and sensual prose I’ve ever encountered. I’m actually meeting up with some friends from the English Dept tomorrow night to talk about it some hopefully on Wednesday I’ll post the results of our conversation and see what our three wine-stimulated brains can make of the text. Right now, though, I just through I’d run through some of the thoughts that have been of particular interest to me.

The first of which is the tone with which the narrator thinks about and articulates desire. Just like TS Eliot (and other good, proper modernists) the text of Swann’s Way presents desire as an inescapably painful and self-destructive force. Desire is always a drive for that which is lacking, that which is absent, or that which is past. For this novel especially, it’s articulated as a desperate yearning for a relational dynamic that the protagonist realizes is only attainable through memory:
“From that evening on, Swann understood that the feeling Odette had for him would never revive, that his hope of happiness would not be realized now” (366).
Thus half of the tragedy of Swann’s situation lies in his actual love for a woman who appears not to return the sentiments, while the other (and perhaps more powerful) half is tied to Swann’s recognition of the ironic power reversal of their relationship: originally, Swann was the distant recipient of a love-struck Odette’s attentions. And so the fact that Odette did once love him ultimately acts as that which ‘deals the fatal blow’. Swann is forever left “in search of [the] lost time” when his relationship with Odette was more fulfilling.
Immensely introspective, Swann’s Way battles through the obsessive compulsions wrapped up in the actual experience of love, detailing jealousies, hate, disillusionment and depression. Swann’s desire for Odette becomes a masochistic addiction for him, pulling him, with each encounter with her, towards his own erasure and dissolution.